FINANCIAL ONLINE INFORMATION – A COMPARATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS OF TRADITIONAL VERSUS SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE WEB PORTALS

摘要

Numerous Web portals pertaining to both traditional and socially responsible investment (SRI) have emerged in recent years, seeking to help investors make informed decisions. This paper highlights starting points for enhancing SRI Web site communication, since more effective SRI communication will lead to heightened interest in SRI. This, in turn, could provide companies in the solar-energy sector with a better financial standing, as they are typical investment objects of socially responsible investors. A sample of five SRI Web sites is examined qualitatively and quantitatively and juxtaposed to a sample of five traditional investment sites. The qualitative and quantitative analyses illuminate how the Web sites accommodate the particular information needs of their audiences and unveil ideological differences in the arguments put forward. SRI sites have been found to provide argumentative rather than factual content, as opposed to traditional investment sites. They outperform traditional investment sites at the interpersonal level by including their audience in the discourse linguistically and through interactive community-building features. Conversely, traditional investment sites are more effective in tailoring their messages to the hypertextual environment as regards paragraph length, internal hyperlinks and anchor links.